It came to pass when men began to
multiply on the face of the earth and
daughters were born unto them that the sons
of God saw the daughters of men that
they were fair and they took them wives
of all which they chose.
And the Lord said, My spirit shall not
always strive with man, for that he also
is flesh.
But his days shall be a hundred and
twenty years.
And God saw that the wickedness of man
was great in the earth and that every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually.
And it repented the Lord that he had
made man on the earth and it grieved
him at his heart.
And the Lord said, I will destroy man
whom I have created from the face of
the earth, both man and beast, and the
creeping thing and the fowls of the air.
And it repented me that I have made
them.
And the earth was corrupt before God and
the earth was filled with violence.
And God said unto Noah, The end of
all flesh has come before me, for the
earth is filled with violence through them.
And behold, I will destroy them with the
earth, make thee an ark of gopher wood,
and room shalt thou make in the ark,
and shalt pitch it within, and without, with
pitch.
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life,
in the second month, in the seventeenth day
of the month, the same day were all
the fountains of the great deep broken up.
And the windows of heaven were opened, and
the rain was upon the earth forty days
and forty nights.
And all flesh died that moved upon the
earth, both of fowl and of cattle and
of beast, and of every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth, and every man.
And every living substance was destroyed which was
upon the face of the ground, both man
and cattle and the creeping things and the
fowl of the heaven.
And they were destroyed from the earth, and
Noah only remained alive and they that were
with him in the ark.
And God remembered Noah and every living thing
and all the cattle that was with him
in the ark, and God made a wind
to pass over the earth.
And the waters assuaged, and the fountains all
sowed deep, and the windows of heaven were
shut, and the rain from heaven was restrained.
And the waters returned from out the earth
continually, and after the end of a hundred
and fifty days the waters were abated.
It came to pass at the end of
forty days that Noah opened the window of
the ark which he had made, and he
sent forth a raven which went forth to
and fro until the waters were dried up
from off the earth.
Also he sent forth a dove from him
to see if the waters were abated from
off the face of the ground.
But the dove found no rest for the
sole of her foot, and she returned unto
him into the ark, for the waters were
on the face of the whole earth.
Then he put forth his hand, and took
her, and pulled her in unto him into
the ark.
And he stayed yet seven other days, and
again he sent forth the dove out of
the ark.
And the dove came in to him in
the evening, and lo, in her mouth was
an olive leaf plucked off.
So Noah knew that the waters were abated
from off the earth.
And he stayed yet other seven days, and
sent forth the dove, which returned not again
unto him any more.
Now the verse I have particularly in mind
is a part of verse 9 of chapter
8.
But the dove found no rest for the
sole of her foot.
I say this is an illustration rather than
a type, but I believe the Holy Spirit
put it here.
And I don't wish to enter this strange,
beautiful region of the Genesis world, for the
landscape is as mysterious as it is lovely,
but its scenes are sketchy and fragmentary.
And I'll read close exegesis for somebody else
tonight, and I want to illustrate why the
Holy Spirit does not fill this church.
First we notice the world as God saw
and judged it before the flood.
God searched into the hearts of men, it
says here, and he saw that mankind was
corrupt and wicked, filled with evil thoughts and
imaginations continually.
Now the Holy Spirit says this, that man
is corrupt, wicked, evil of thought and of
imagination.
And God saw the ways of men, that
they were corrupt, violent, and engrossed with transitory
interests, even amid their corruption and violence.
The result of what God saw among men
was grief to God's own heart.
It grieved him at his heart.
And as I said on another occasion, only
love can grieve.
You cannot grieve unless you love.
And God loved the man whom he had
made, and the degenerate and corrupt race that
had descended from him.
And God's love caused him to grieve, and
it filled him with anxious care.
The result was a sentence.
You see, the kindest thing a physician or
surgeon can do sometimes is to take off
the leg.
The kindest thing he can do is to
remove that which otherwise would kill the patient.
However shocking it may be, and however terrible
the news might be to the patient, the
best news for him is amputation.
Otherwise it would be death.
So the dear God who loved mankind looked
upon man and saw that moral corruption had
gotten such a hold on man.
It had gone out into all the bloodstream
and was in all the tissues and cells.
And he knew that the patient would die
unless he sent a kindly judgment to destroy
it and saved a few to start over,
that the race might not perish, borne down
by the spongy, corrupt weight of its own
sins.
So God sent a judgment on the earth,
and the waters covered the earth as they
had formerly covered the sea.
And after the passing of a great many
days, a great number of days, a hundred
and fifty days, the ark of God still
floated there with eight persons aboard, and with
the animals and birds and all the creatures
that would drown and did not die, did
not take fish or the aquatic animals, because
they could live in the water.
But all that which would die by the
waters of the flood, there they were in
the ark.
And of course after the passing of so
many days, it had long passed the flood
stage, where people and things were simply dead.
Corruption had already started to set in, and
Noah opened the ark which had settled upon
Ararat.
He opened the ark and turned the bird
out to see.
You see, the windows of the ark were
upward toward heaven, and there were apparently no
portals out so Noah could look down.
So Noah decided to find out from the
bird whether there was dry ground below, whether
the waters of judgment had assuaged, as it's
called here.
And he opened the window and pushed a
raven out, and there we have a sight
the like of which it is probably very
hard to visualize or understand, but there it
is, that sight of a dark bird sailing
across the desolation.
Now what was that desolation?
What did it amount to?
What did it add up to?
It added up to the judgment of God,
because the angry displeasure of God was on
the world, and the waters of the judgment,
the boiling silt and the floating corpses and
all dead things and bits of flotsam and
jetsam that were there over the waters, they
were a mark of the judgment of God
upon the world.
And the dark bird sailed across the desolation,
and his dark heart felt at home there,
for he was a carrion eater, and he
felt at home among the carrion.
And as that raven sailed away from the
warm light of dark and from the presence
of Noah, he croaked with delight, because out
there now swollen with internal gases until their
heads were topped as a drum, and then
wetted with the waters of the flood, these
floating things, cattle and all creatures, corpses, human
corpses floating there in the waters, to everything
and everybody else it would have been a
repulsive and horrible sight.
But the raven was built for it.
Something in his dark heart loved it, because
he lived on it.
So he immediately sailed down and lighted on
a near and likely corpse, and began to
tear with his great claws and with his
huge beak, great hunks of half-rotten flesh
he tore away, and ate until he was
roguey and sleepy with overeating.
And then he fastened his claws down into
the floating thing, and being happy and restful,
he went to sleep, croaking a goodnight word,
the happiness that he found what his heart
wanted.
Corruption and desolation and silt and flotsam and
rotten flesh and dead things, for I say
this fitted his disposition and his temperament.
So he fed on the floating death, and
so my friends this is, if not a
type, at least a brilliant illustration of how
things are in the world today.
When man sinned, and God deserted him, and
he deserted God, and he went out from
the place that had been Eden, the garden
eastward in Eden, and began to propagate himself,
man had the judgment of God upon him.
The day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die.
The pointed-under man wants to die, and
after that the judgment, says God.
And God says that he's displeased with every
man, and that unless we repent we shall
all perish, and all the nations of the
world shall be turned into hell.
God is displeased with the nations of the
world.
He's displeased not only with the east, he's
displeased with the west.
He sends his judgment not only upon the
iron curtain countries, but he sends his judgment
upon the so-called free nations of the
world, of which this is one.
So that the great judgment of God is
upon mankind, all the stock of mankind, red
and yellow, black and white, educated and uneducated,
cultured and uncultured, cavemen and learned men around
the world.
And yet you know that because man has
in him that thing we call sin, he
doesn't seem to bother people, doesn't bother them
at all, because just as the raven was
at home in the desolation, his dark heart
had an affinity for the judgment and desolation.
So it is that men find themselves at
a home in a world under the judgment
of God.
The only one good man that ever came
to the world could only manage to stay
alive 33 years, and then they took him
out and nailed him on a cross.
And the better men are, the worse they're
despised by those who love the desolation and
the darkness that is the sin of the
world.
And just as the raven never came back
to the ark, but lived out there in
the desolation, so men have built their civilization
upon floating death, and you find it everywhere.
We like to think otherwise.
We're proud of our culture, and we're proud
of our bridges and our roads and our
permits, and all the things that we can
do.
But God looks on the heart, and God
says the world is filled with violence, and
it's filled with violence now, and it's filled
with corruption now, and it's filled with iniquity
now, just as it was then.
But the woeful thing is that we accept
it.
Men accept it as such.
Instead of being horrified by it, they accept
it, and they excuse it, and they write
books to call it something else.
I think, for instance, the sodomy, or the
homosexuality, that the plain name is sodomy, that
brought the fire of God down on Sodom
and Gomorrah.
I have seen books and read books that
have been written to excuse this and say
that it's quite the proper thing, and that
if a man is born with a yin
for another man instead of a woman, he's
natural, and he ought not to be criticized.
He's living his own nature, and they ought
to call it not something bad, but it's
his way of living.
So we have books, and learned professors rise
and rattle their degrees, and stand up and
argue in favor of sodomy, and every other
vice under the sun.
So the judgment of God is upon the
world for this, upon floating death everywhere.
Well, the judgment now, God sends out the
raven, and the raven never comes back, because
the raven is pleased with what it sees.
But God sends out the dove.
Noah sends out the dove, acting for God,
sends out the dove, and you know, have
you ever heard a dove or a pigeon?
The dove and her oar, where their wings
have, how they cling to your wrist, and
you put her upon his wrist, and she
took off, and whirled, banked, and turned, and
banked, and pretty soon he heard the whir
of the wings again, and he put out
his wrist, and she hopped on his wrist,
and he pulled her back in.
She had something in her that couldn't stand
corruption, she couldn't stand filth, she couldn't stand
bloated corpses, she couldn't stand what the raven
loved.
Because she had in her not the dark
heart of the raven, but she had in
her the heart of the dove.
It was not for nothing that when the
Holy Ghost came down upon Jesus he came
in the form of a dove.
The pink feet and the round, bright eye
of the dove.
Those pink feet will never land on anything
dirty, those pink feet will never land on
anything filthy, and those round, bright eyes will
never look with allowance upon anything that is
filthy.
The dove is a type and picture of
the Holy Ghost, harmless and pure and meek
and sensitive and loving, and so she came
back.
She couldn't stand it, the judgments of God
were everywhere, and the silt and the filth
and the flotsam were too much for her
dove heart, so she came back and asked
to get in the best she could, fluttering
against the edge of the window, and he
pulled her in and kept her there for
a while.
Now, why did Jesus say, when he spoke
of the Holy Spirit, whom the world cannot
receive?
Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth
him not, neither knoweth him.
There is one thing absolutely that Christians ought
to get in their minds.
It is that the world knows nothing about
the Holy Ghost.
The world knows nothing about the Spirit.
The world knows about good men.
The world appreciates a good man if he
gives to colleges and hospitals and goes over
and runs a clinic to take care of
her lepers.
They'll write books about him and celebrate him.
The world knows about good men, but the
world has absolutely no affinity for the Holy
Spirit, because even good men are under the
judgment of God.
And the best that we have in the
world, our universities, our oratorical societies, the best
we have, apart from the new birth, apart
from the presence of God in the life
of a man, is only corruption and the
wrath of God is upon it.
The world cannot receive it.
And I think that the most, I think
that the most, the most awful, the most
terrifying thing that the sensitive Christian heart can
hear is the whirring of the wings of
God.
God wants to come down.
He wants to get into our houses of
Parliament.
He wants to get into our Congresses and
Senates.
He wants to get into our United Nations.
He wants to get into our groups that
play baseball and hockey.
God wants to get in, but he can't
get in, because the judgment, his wrath is
upon men.
His fury is upon a corrupt and violent
and vicious world.
So the Holy Spirit is restless and he
can't come down.
And he won't come down, for he loves
mankind.
He loves the blackest sinner in all the
world.
It might be you or me, because sin
is of the heart as well as of
the body and of conduct.
Now, it would be something else again, and
I suppose I wouldn't preach this sermon tonight
if all I had to say was that
the world could not receive the Holy Spirit.
But that which gives me the most concern
is that the Holy Ghost cannot even light
upon Christians.
Now, every Christian has a measure of the
Holy Spirit.
Let's get that straight.
Except a man has the Holy Spirit, he
is none of his.
And when the Holy Spirit converts a man,
regenerates a man, there is a deposit of
the Holy Spirit in the life of that
man.
That is one thing.
I want you to know my theology is
quite sound indeed.
In fact, I preach this same sermon at
Moody Bible Institute and I think Wheaton College
and a few other places.
So it's not heresy and it's not Pentecostalism.
I am trying to get through to you
a truth that I want you to hear,
and it is that the Holy Spirit is
in some measure resident in the breast of
everybody that's converted.
Otherwise it wouldn't be converted.
The Holy Spirit doesn't stand outside the man
and regenerate him.
He comes in to regenerate him.
That is one thing, and we're glad and
grateful for that.
That is one thing, but it's quite another
thing for the Holy Spirit to come down
with his wings outspread, uninhibited, free, and pleased
and to fill lives and to fill churches
and to fill denominations.
That's quite another thing, that some measure of
the Spirit is in the breast of every
man, is good and right and real, but
that the Holy Spirit wants to come down
as the dove wanted to land on the
earth, on the dry ground, and could find
no place for the soul of her foot.
That is also true.
Now, the Spirit seeks, I say, among us
a resting place for his feet.
The Holy Ghost seeks a resting place for
his feet, and we have called these lightings
down, these comings down of the Holy Ghost,
we have called them revivals, and we're languishing
for the lighting down of the Spirit.
I say this to you now, as you
know, I can't hope to continue to please
people very long, because I have to tell
the truth, and truth is not very well
received, not even by the saints.
But the simple truth is, unless we have
a lighting down upon evangelicalism, upon fundamentalism, upon
such churches as our alliance churches, unless we
have a lighting down, unless the dove of
God can come down with his wings outspread
and make himself known and felt among us,
that which is fundamentalism today in twenty-five
years will be liberalism.
You can be certain of that, and liberalism
will be unitarianism, because this vile world is
not to lead us on to God.
We're going the other direction.
Have you thought about it, my brother?
Have you thought about it?
Or are you simply running around being entertained?
Have you thought about all this?
You and I are going to face judgment
one of these days.
You and I are going to stand before
the man whose eyes are like fire, and
out of whose mouth there comes a sharp,
two-edged sword, and we're going to have
to talk to him about deeds done in
the body.
And we're going to have to face what
Wesley called the greatest eyes, and there be
judged for the deeds done in the body.
Not the great white throne judgment, which is
for sinners, but another judgment which is for
Christians.
And we're going to have to show him
that we've been serious about all this, that
we weren't out to be entertained, we were
out to be that we might be holy.
And the Spirit is seeking a rest for
the soul of its foot.
He's seeking it, and yet I hear the
fluttering of holy wings, and I hear the
mourning sound of him who is grieved and
clenched.
I see him looking about for signs of
repentance, for signs of sorrow of heart, and
the lifting of the judgment of God from
the Church.
When God judges the world, it will be
terror and fire.
But God wants to judge the Church, he
wants to judge you and me, his children.
He wants to begin at the house of
the Lord, and he wants to begin to
judge us.
And the absence of the full power of
the Holy Ghost is perpetual condemnation.
Now, what are the marks of God's displeasure
upon his people?
What are the marks of them?
Well, let me name a few of them
for you.
Plain sins which nobody can deny, sins of
act and of habit, sins of selfishness such
as reveling in wealth while the world stars,
living like kings while millions perish, sins of
the heart such as lust.
You know, you can be a Christian, or
at least you can belong to a good
church and still have lust in your heart.
You can belong to a good church and
still have spite in your heart, because you
go to the pastor or the elder or
the deacon or whoever takes them in in
your church, and they can't look in your
heart and know whether you've got lust in
there or not.
We've all cultivated the religious grin, and we
all manage to look pious when the occasion
comes up.
So when we apply for membership, we smile
piously and they say, he's a fine young
man, but in his heart there is lust
and God hates it and the dove won't
come down.
We can't look in a woman's heart and
see that she's spiteful there because the woman
across the streets has a longer car than
she has, or a fur coat that costs
more.
She can't see resentment that's in the hearts
of people and laying there.
There are churches where deacons and elders sit
on the same board for years with unconfessed
resentment in their hearts, and resentment in the
heart of a man is just as bad
as adultery, and resentment and spite in the
heart of a woman is just as bad
as the world.
We make ourselves very holy and we laugh
at Elvis Presley.
I don't think he's worthy of even being
at himself.
I think he should go get lost.
That's the way I feel about him.
But I wonder after all, a poor hillbilly
from, where is it, Mississippi or somewhere, who
never had a chance in his life, and
all he learned to do was to look
pretty and wiggle and sing.
Well, he made a million at it, he
made a million at it.
They wanted him here in Toronto and he
asked for fifty thousand dollars, and the fellow
that was signing him up said, I can't
stand the expense and I can't stand Elvis.
So they didn't bring Elvis.
But why should we look down our holy
noses at that hillbilly?
He's doing the only thing he knows to
do.
And I wonder if Elvis, when he goes
into a coma and begins to swing and
sing, I wonder if Elvis is any worse
than some of us pious people that have
spite in our heart and resentment and jealousy.
Al, I hope it's not so in your
choir, and I have no reason to think
it is.
But you know what they call the choir
of the War Department, because up there is
where the fights take place.
Well, why don't you ask me to sing?
Well, chiefly, because you can't, is the main
reason, you know, that's it, chiefly.
But we have this kind of evil thing
in our hearts, resentment.
I've met people that just lived with resentment.
You know, friends, I just never did anybody.
I refuse absolutely.
I come from a fiery, nervous English strain.
My father, his temper was like the trigger
on an atom bomb, and he could blow
up.
I've seen him take a shovel and beat
a wheelbarrow in anger, you know, just beat
a wheelbarrow.
And I got it, but I won't stay
sour at anybody.
I refuse to do it.
I refuse to have resentment and ill will
and unforgiving spirit eat at my vitals.
Forgive the guy, for God's sake, forgive him,
sister.
He didn't know any better anyhow, and if
he did, he's sorry now.
Forgive the fellow, and you'll feel better inside.
Yet we've got it, spite, and we've got
jealousy, and we've got envy, and we've got
pride.
Pride of person, and pride of creed, and
pride of possession, and pride of race, and
pride of accomplishment.
And then there is coldness of heart toward
the Godhead.
We sing about God and we pray, but
it lacks warmth.
And we worship, but coldly and stiffly, and
toward the languishing church.
Back in Israel, the man of God warned
the Jews, he said, Woe unto them that
are these in Zion, stretch themselves on beds
of ivory, and make instruments of music like
David, but they're not grieved for the judgments
of Israel.
And that's where we are.
We're fundamental, sure we are.
Carry our school field Bible, sure we do.
And we're evangelical, but the Church is languishing
and we don't care, at least we don't
care very much.
And then there's the poor, sick world out
there.
I, for my part, as I've said again
before, I don't want to be happy while
the world perishes.
Nobody loves the world quite enough.
The man who loved the world enough to
die for it, died for it.
And the man who loved Israel enough to
want to perish for Israel, cried out he
wanted to be accursed for Israel's sake.
That was Paul.
But I don't know, we don't seem to
have it much these days.
Much of our Christianity is social instead of
spiritual.
We should be a spiritual body with social
overtones.
Instead of that, most of our churches are
social bodies with spiritual overtones.
The heart of the Church always ought to
be Christ and the Holy Spirit.
The heart of the Church always ought to
be heaven and God and righteousness and they
that loved the Lord spoke often one to
another, and what they spoke about was spiritual
things.
I have met men, I have met men
that you couldn't talk to about anything but
God.
You had a Canadian right here in this
city by the name of Geoffrey.
I wrote his life.
I called it, Let My People Go, Robert
Geoffrey.
Used to be part owner of your Goldman
Mail.
And he became a Christian, pulled away from
his family over their protest.
They got over it later and everybody was
happy.
But first he pulled away and went to
the mission field.
That man of God, that good godly man.
And after a few years of searching for
the lost and winning them and reading maps
and going where no man in his condition
should ever have gone because he was overweight
and he had diabetes so that it was
difficult for him to eat right.
And yet he went and went and went
and lived on whatever he could find to
eat and lived among the poor and the
miserable peoples of the world, always saying to
the God, Let My People Go, and winning
them.
Well, that man got to a place where
you couldn't talk to him.
I sat beside him in a home in
Chicago and I tried to discuss just common
things with him.
You couldn't do it.
He looked down and answered and began to
talk about God and missions.
I have met Saints like that, people who
were so interested in the things of God
that nothing else mattered.
And my brother and sister, the Holy Spirit
loves people like that.
He loves that kind of spirit and he's
quick to come and fulfill and to take
over and to take charge.
I had hoped that at least an olive
leaf, that we might find at least an
olive leaf.
But I don't know, I don't know.
I thought I could come to Toronto and
that I could perhaps spend my time writing
during the week and then spend Saturday getting
ready for Sunday, preach on Sunday and then
go back.
But I find I can't do it.
I carry the burden of it and the
load of it on my heart.
And if the people aren't going to obey,
if they're not going to follow God, if
they're not going to surrender, why should I
waste much time?
God's looking for a people, a people who
want to be right.
He's looking for a little spot at least
where the waters of his displeasure are dried
up, where there's no more judgment, no, no,
no more death, where the silt and flotsams
have all been cleaned away and where the
blessed Holy Spirit can come down in power.
He wants to do that at Avenue Road
Church.
He wants to do that beginning with, we
were on the platform maybe, I don't know,
he doesn't always, and going to everybody in
the church.
He wants to do that for us.
Now I prove by telling you an honest
story, this.
A man was on the train once, I
don't remember where I was traveling from, but
he got on and he sat down with
me and I knew the man, he was
a missionary from India.
And he seemed very tender and broken and
he said, I'd like to ask you something,
Mr. Tozer, I'm troubled, I'm bothered, and I'd
like to ask you something.
And I said, I'm so used to it,
and just another one I thought, but he
said, this is my problem.
Now he said about, he named a number
of years back, he said, a strange thing
happened on our mission compound in India.
He said, we had been having blessing and
people were blessed and everything was going all
right.
But he said, the missionaries got together for
a little conference in this field in India,
and the native Christians were there, and we
were all sitting around together.
And he said, a Presbyterian preacher, a missionary,
got up to preach to us.
And he preached and he sat down.
And he said, Mr. Tozer, I'll never be
able to describe what happened.
And I don't know why it happened, but
he said, suddenly there came down on that
assembly something like a wave of love and
light.
And he said, it broke us up completely.
And he said, one missionary ran to another
one, said, forgive me, forgive me.
And another one ran to the other, and
they wept and hugged each other.
Now he said, a strange result has been,
this has had a strange result.
It is this.
He said, in my home it's been completely
transformed.
Now he said, my wife and I were
getting on perfectly well, normal Christian home.
But he said, oh, the difference since that
time.
Home is heaven now, he said.
But he said, now that didn't bother me,
but here's what bothered me.
He said, since that time I am so
tender and I weep so easily that it
bothers me.
He said, when I get up to preach,
I am just as likely as not to
break down and cry.
Now he said, never was that way before.
But he said, since the coming down that
day, that sudden wonderful visitation in India, he
said, I just cry so easily, said, my
heart's tender.
And he said, I get up to speak,
and there it goes again.
He said, now coming across on this ship
I had this experience.
So they asked me to take chapel on
shipboard one morning.
And I did.
And he said, they told me there were
some Communists who would be present in the
service.
And he said, I put my text, and
there it came again.
He said, the memory of all the glory
came down on me.
And he said, I just began to cry
like I couldn't finish my sermon.
I said, what did the Communists think of
it?
Did they make fun of you?
Oh, no, he said.
He said, they were very reverent about it.
He said, now I'm not saying anything good
about the Communists, I can't.
But at least in this case, the Holy
Ghost had shut them out, even the Communists.
And then I said to my friend, Bert,
you asked me for advice.
How can you overcome your tender heart?
He said, for God's sake, brother, don't try
it.
We got so many dry preachers in the
United States now, it is down there.
We got so many, and of course you
have them here.
We got so many dry preachers, and we
got so many men who couldn't shed a
tear.
I said, if you can keep the tears
of God on you and keep your heart
tender, keep it, brother.
You've got a treasure I'd never give up.
You know how they got that way?
The coming down, the lighting down.
Now, I don't think that Christian preacher had
anything to do with it.
He might have, you know.
God used him.
But they got right with each other.
They got cleaned up.
They got trouble out of their heart, and
they got their sins put away.
Even missionaries got their sins put away.
And when there was no more evidence of
the displeasure of Almighty God, the Holy Ghost
came down.
Do you know what I believe?
I believe that this church and you who
are now in this building, I believe that
we could have and enjoy a sense of
the divine presence so sweet, so beautiful, so
tender, that it would change our whole personality,
that it would change our attitude toward each
other, that it would clear up a lot
of things some of you are troubled with
inside of you, that it would be like
the coming of spring to a landscape, sweet
and fresh and warm with birdsong and sunshine.
And there would be no fanaticism, and there
would be no wild doctrines, and there would
be no imported wonders.
There would just be a coming down of
the dove.
He could find no place for the soles
of his feet.
And I wonder if that isn't the trouble
now with most of us.
You want to be filled and blessed, but
you're not willing to pay the price of
letting your life get cleaned up so that
you're not only a Christian, you've not only
accepted Christ, but you've gotten right so God
can do it.
Are you concerned?
Are you interested?
Next Sunday night I want to talk about
how to be filled with the Spirit.
But unless the impurities and the things that
God hates are cleansed out of our lives,
we won't be able to do anything about
it.
You say, are you charging this church with
wrongdoing?
No, I just know people.
I know people, and you're just people.
You're nice people, but you're people.
And I don't sense too much of the
Holy Ghost.
Maybe that's the reason.
He just isn't at home.
He's here, and he'll always be here.
Oh, I'm with you always.
But he's not free, and he's not happy
in our midst, as he could be and
would be if we'd all personally decide to
put away lying and dishonesty and impurity and
spite and jealousy and envy and hate and
unforgiving spirit and pride and egotism and vanity
and all other things, or any other thing,
and say, Come, come, Lord Jesus.